There've been various mentions of the financial situation at SAFC so I took the liberty of doing a quick comparison. Despite the fact that neither side has won anything of late, the argument currently going the rounds is that the lcak of spending by Reid is the key to their failure to progress. I have therefore looked at the respective clubs' player trading during their period of rebuiding. I reckon that ours can be counted from 1993 with thr promotion push and subsequent attempts to keep the bandwagon rolling and for the mackems it is from the point of relegation in 1997 when they went back to the drawing board. These figures are far from perfect, mostly coming from the soccerbase website, but at least give us a frame of reference:

	NUFC	mackems
Seasons	1993-2001	1997-2001
Signed	£164,110,000.00	£39,870,000.00
Sold	£93,730,000.00	£21,100,000.00
Balance	£70,380,000.00	£18,770,000.00
Cost of Current Squad	£77,280,000.00	£27,300,000.00
Cost of Sold Players	£86,830,000.00	£12,570,000.00
Net Transfers	£6,900,000.00	£8,530,000.00
Record Signing	£15,000,000.00	£4,500,000.00
% of Current Squad	19%	16%

The workings are hopefully self-explanatory, but the ones that might need a bit of head scratching are:

Net Transfers: this is from subtracting the cost of your sold players from the money you got from them (e.g. SAFC have earned 21.1mil from selling players, but those players cost them 12.57mil so the net trade is +8.53mil).

The % of current squad is all about what percentage of the cost of the current playing staff made up by the record signing.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2001

Answers

The question is whether the respective clubs can boost their income to cover both wages and any loss of value from having to hang onto playing staff rather than recouping part of the outlay. Obviously the ability to produce youngsters who can be sold to bankroll the signing of quality replacements is another vital part of that.

Sunderland have signed 14 players for more than 1mil. The total cost of this group is 33.4mil, with 10.1mil already having been sold for 9.5mil. Of this top group, Schwarz would not fetch much of the 4mil outlay through age whilst Oster and Laslandes would fetch naff-all unless people see them play the occasional game.

It seems that with Laslandes unable to even reach the bench and Quinn surely due to retire, Reid needs strikers. However, he only has his Argentinians and Phillips as bankable assets and can't sell them for fear of losing more gate revenue. It looks like they either have to go into the red to suplement Phillips with quality or face up to losing him and a chunk of disgruntled occasional match-goers.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2001

The mackems have managed to fund 31% of their current playing staff through net transfers whilst we have only managed 9%.

However, our profligacy has resulted in 50,000 punters paying full price whilst all that penny-pinching means that they are selling out Roker Park but having to fill the rest of SoL with concessions and freebies. Speculate to accumulate and all that.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2001

Cue Roly,

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2001

Hope so buff, I'm having to make it up as I go along :-)

Not sure we could get 77mil for our current playing staff, we really need the virtuous circle of a good cup run and European footie again. At least that looks less of a foolish hope than it has of late. Current points per game are as good as when Bobby first took over and equal to a couple of Keegan's seasons (1994-95 and his part of 1996- 97 to be exact).

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2001

Softie, I think you could justify a valuation of our squad at 77m. I think we could reasonably (and I've been fairly conservative in some cases) expect to get the following: Dyer 20, Robert 12.5, Bellamy 7.5, Solano 7.5, Given 2.5, Dabizas 3, O'Brien 3, Hughes 2, Cort 6, Speed 1, Acuna 1, Bassedas 1, Elliot 1, Barton .5, Lee .5, Lua Lua 1.5, Ameobi 2, Shearer 2.5, Harper 0.5, Griffin 1.5. That comes to a hypothetical 77m and still leaves Beharall, Caldwell, Bernard, Gavilban, McClen, Chopra plus various others (I stopped when I reached 77). Throw in the 5m we're all banking on when Marcelino takes his rightful position at one of Europe's top clubs and we're way over.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2001

And what about Hooper? I'm sure he's still on the books. I heard Keegan gave him a 80 year contract.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2001

surely Bellamy is priceless?

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2001

surely Bellamy is priceless?

Don't be silly. He's useless. A complete waste of money and you were the first to spot the fact. Stick to your guns Swift. Don't weaken now.

Swift's Taxidermist driver.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2001

the stats are telling - a lot of work gone into those or was it a copy and paste job.... very good though!!! (*faint*)

The only segments that are missing and may be impossible to calculate the effect of are the players wages and signing on fees, then effect of Bosman and other structural changes.

However, I diagree with you re ticket revenue. It isn't "that" important now but it may be later if TV revenue collapses.

Firstly, you don't get your basic league revenue as it is securitised and it goes to the investors.

We are still re-building that base in that area hence the desire to rebuild from kids upwards as we have to get them and others on board now so that they are mature fans before the current tv deal expires in 4 years time. It is unlikely that any new tv deal will be as large as this one.

Secondly the proportion to tv money and league positions is relatively small.

You can't do an anlysis just on costs/net expenditure without looking at the financing side (revenue/income)....

Harder work though.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2001

not your usually robust demolition job Roly

I did have the thought after Saturday that Murray and Reid were absolutely right to stand up and refuse to pay exhorbitant wages to players with more ego than talent. There is no way any club can commit itself to wages that it can't justify and that if Sunderlnad were to be relegated then Murray would be proved right all along. It may well just be a self fulfilling prophecy though.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2001

Those figures are pinched from the transfer section of soccerbase.com for SAFC and from various sources for NUFC. Soccerbase has several errors on it and they don't seem to go back to recalculate selling on payments or increases through appearances. For instance, since they don't know what the settlement for Nunez was they don't bother giving a figure at all.

I was amazed to see that you had only bought 14 players who cost 1mil and up though, and was extremely impressed as to how far you have come for such a low outlay. However, I can't help but think your future would be secured by spending on some genuinely exciting players and turning those daytrippers and freebies into season- tickets. The money still pouring into our club despite the piss-poor pr and strategic planning is saving our arses long enough for Bobby to deliver us from evil (probably).

From looking at your trading over the last 4 years it would be very SAFC to cash in on Phillips and look for more gems in the lower leagues, but it's only when you go into the specifics that you see the continuous losses on dodgy foreigners (just like NUFC only less high profile) like Peeters, Fredegard, Laslandes (?) and Roy. This suggests that Reid has no idea outside Britain and supports the general feeling that you have to buy big on the continent to get success.

I just don't understand why you left Roker Park and tried for the big time if you were going to perservere with the small-time transfer policy.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2001

Re the movement from Roker, maybe they are doing it step by step, the first part is to pay for the stadium while spending enough to stay in the PL, then spending on the playing side.

Wrong way around for me, however if it works, it works. At least they do not have huge debts and if they are relegated they can again concentrate on the playing side to revamp them again.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2001

This whole discussion about finances and player values etc reminds me of an amazing fact I was told about Bayern: that their record buy is about £5 million. Good youth system, I suppose.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2001

A pretty damning indictement on my assessment (it wasn't analysis - ur right) Macbeth!!!

Anyway both clubs are leveraged!!!!!

1. NUFC is heavily finacially leveraged but has a management infrastructure and a "brand" that pulls in income. A test of that was the activities of Fred and Doug whioh did not "hurt" revenues significantly. What you must not forget (and I never have although some of my fellow supporters choose not to recognise it) is that SJH had a great deal of vision when he bought into NUFC and effectively gave it a 6/9 year headstart on SAFC - from the same base (then). SAFC is still trying to catch up - but the financing of the game is changing (even now). Even though one could argue that the SAFC balance sheet is "better" than the NUFC one the difference is this - point No 2:

2. SAFC is very highly OPERATIONALLY leveraged, ie, its very conservative Chairman/Board and its low levels of debt mean that every resource in the club is strained and stretched and that they are forced to argue for every penny, after all.... Whilst some may think that SAFC has more access to capital than NUFC - this isn't necessarily true after all debt is just anotehr form of capital!!!

Interestingly enough I have another view as to why Freddy is trying to buy more shares in the club. Of course he may or may not launch a bid and time will tell but it is fairly well known that Cameron Hall are on te verge of insolvency and of course it owns circa. 40% of teh shares in NUFC and those shares are currently pledged to CH's bankers.

Now if Freddy gets above 20% (he has 18% now) and the bankers foreclose on CH - a 20% shareholding has obtains powers that could potentially block any sale of any other shareholding or at the very least have a major say in who shares are sold to (I think any block over 5% has to consult with other shareholders of more than 20%.

So his positioning could be a defensive one not an offensive one....

Ramble over.....

-- Anonymous, November 07, 2001

You're right about the brand: bloody Coca Cola and now some car manufacturer cashing in on the Toon Army as a symbol for longevity and loyalty.....cue 10,004 against Oxford. The actual fans are getting to be a bigger asset than half the playing staff.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 2001

Softie

I saw a spoof video a few weeks ago when it was the year 2030 and there were no spectators in the stadium but every armchair fan via his sky link up had a button that could be pressed repeatedly to raise the volume of noise of fans cheering in the stadium.... which was artificial noise and fed out of speakers....

Bit like SJP eh?

:OP

-- Anonymous, November 07, 2001

It'll never work for me, I only go to avoid beng nagged.

They actually conducted a new experiment against Villa this season. They got the players to put loads of passion into it and keep attacking until we'd stuffed the b*ggers. Seemed to have a remarkaby similar effect to clicking those buttons, can't think why they didn't try it last season.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 2001